Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and the Values Wars

As one of the most religious and racially segregated communities
in the U.S., African Americans generally view atheism as a form
of race betrayal. Socially conservative on abortion, same sex
marriage and church/state separation, the Black Church has
largely abandoned its historic emphasis on civil rights, making
destructive alliances with the Religious Right while urban black
communities flounder economically. Although black women are
traditionally portrayed as the "backbone" of the Black Church,
the "values wars" have further solidified institutional sexism
and homophobia in black communities. Historically, visionary
freethinkers such as Frederick Douglass, A. Philip Randolph, Zora
Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen and Alice Walker have questioned the
role religiosity plays in black identity and black liberation
struggle. Nonetheless, a majority in the African-American
community believe that "real black folks," particularly black
women, should be in church on Sunday getting the Holy Ghost (or
at least professing to). Yet, as the nation has become more
religiously conservative, a growing number of progressive African
American non-believers are challenging black religious and social
orthodoxies online and in atheist advocacy groups. In this
probing analysis, black feminist social commentator and author
Sikivu Hutchinson examines the cultural and historical influence
of African American humanist and atheist social thought. She
situates this tradition within the broader context of public
morality, exploring the dynamics of civil rights and Christian
activism, feminism and social justice, the whiteness of "New
Atheism" and the science debates, and the insidious backlash of
Tea Party-style white nationalism against social welfare public
policy.

Author Bio

Author Bio: Sikivu Hutchinson is a writer and educator. She is
the author of Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation
Politics in Los Angeles (Lang, 2003) and has published fiction,
essays and critical theory in Social Text, California English,
Black Agenda Report, Secular Nation and American Atheist
Magazine. She is also the editor of blackfemlens.org and a senior
fellow for the Institute for Humanist Studies.